Our work wasn’t on the walls at the beginning of the year; there were only photographs of Jews (real ones) taken full-face and side-on. We had to study them, and discuss them freely, without thinking about whether our comments were respectable or our speech refined enough.
‘It’s totally intolerable to look so gross!’
‘That’s a scarecrow!’
‘Yeah! He should be stuck in a field, scaring away crows!’
‘Lucky photos don’t smell!’
‘Otherwise it’d stink of shit!’
It was fun just to say whatever came into our heads. But it didn’t last long. The teacher told us to give it a break because we were making such a racket. We moved from the fun stage to the scientific stage. We had to study the photos with precision, measuring the length of the nose, the eyes, the ears, the height of the forehead, the thickness of the lips, the width of the eyes. And find appropriate terms to designate the colour of the eyes and hair. We had to enter our results in a chart and compare it to a chart of Aryan measurement statistics. Too easy. The figures were diametrically opposite. And we didn’t need to rack our brains about the colour of the eyes and hair: black. The whole class passed that test with flying colours.
Then the teacher stuck a sketch on the wall, entitled: The Wandering Jew. An old man, hunched over and shrivelled up, with a thin, scowling face, as wizened as a rotten apple, leaning on a stick, and dressed in rags, carrying a filthy bundle on his bag. At the bottom of the drawing the caption read: They arrived from the Orient like this…The teacher emphasised the ellipsis. We had to find out the meaning of that particular punctuation. Our homework was to imagine the Jew’s transformation once he’d settled in Germany or another European country. Our presentation could be either a drawing or an essay.
I don’t like writing essays.
I don’t like drawing either.
Chewing on my pencil in front of a blank page is not my thing. Nor is daydreaming about a landscape—or, in this case, a silhouette of a face—in order to make a drawing. Writers and artists are highbrow wimps. But I had to produce something, or else I’d be punished. I’m no idiot, so I worked out that the other section of the sketch must be in the reading room, where they leave piles of newspapers with news from the front for us to read. There are caricatures of Jews in almost all the papers. I just had to dig up the one from which the first part of the sketch had been cut out. But I drew a blank. Obviously. The teacher had predicted that smart-arses like me would try something sneaky, so he’d already removed the newspaper from the shelves.
If only we’d been set this task after the Heimführer’s reading in the dining hall, I could have drawn a parasite shaped like a bean. It’s easy to draw a bean: you just add hair and eyes to a sort of concave semicircle, and that’s it. But I’m telling you about a class that happened before the reading…So, what was to be done? Copy off a classmate? It was tempting, but dangerous. Copying is dishonourable (the opposite of denunciation and spying, both considered fundamental values). The punishment could be as severe as confiscation of your dagger of honour, in public, in front of the whole student assembly. That was out of the question. I intended to keep my sword.
I finally worked out a deal with Manfred. He’s hopeless at sport and has about as little Draufgängertum as a parish priest, but he’s an artist and loves drawing. To whip up an extra sketch for me was no trouble at all for him. In exchange, when we had to take each other on in a boxing match, I let him win. The instructor was surprised, but didn’t tear strips off me. ‘There are some days when we’re not up to scratch,’ he said, ‘but be careful all the same, Konrad. Pull yourself together. Next time I won’t let you off the hook.’
He winked at me. I think he understood that I was forced to ‘go down’, as they say in boxing. Our boxing instructor is not a nobody, far from it; he’s Herr Rohloff, European boxing champion. I guess that if he’s not world champion, it’s precisely because he too had to ‘go down’ at some point. (We’re lucky at the Napola. As sport is the most important subject, our teachers are famous individuals; our javelin instructor, for example, is the Olympic champion, Herr Stöck.)
Getting back to the topic in hand, Manfred did a wonderful drawing for me. A fat, pot-bellied Jew, sitting with his legs splayed on a huge sack in the shape of a globe of the world, with the word MONEY written in capitals across the front of the globe. He’s sweating, his cheeks are scarlet, as if he’s been drinking, and studded with black dots because he’s unshaven. He looks like he’s well dressed but his suit is ugly and crumpled. Manfred has used colours that clash: purple shoes, green socks and a red tie. The sweaty, fat Jew’s black hat has slid off his head and is lying on the ground.
The teacher praised me and I got ten out of ten. My drawing was framed and hung on the wall. Manfred got 9.5 for his drawing, The Poisonous Mushroom, which was also inspired. The top of the mushroom was a Jew’s hat, the stem a Jew’s face, with a big nose, sticking-out ears, and a red flared beard. The root of the mushroom, emerging from the ground, was a five-pointed star. I mean, why didn’t someone think of that before? The teacher explained that the only reason he didn’t get full marks was that, although his drawing was a perfectly accurate representation of reality, it did not follow the instructions, which asked for a portrayal of the transformation of the Jew, once settled in Europe. Likewise, my mates were off topic with their drawings of Jews with pig ears or hairy ears.
The teacher finally showed us the second part of the original sketch from the newspaper. It was the same Jew, but instead of being scrawny and in rags he’d become fat, wore a suit in bad taste, covered in gold and sparkling diamonds, and he was smoking a cigar. With his foot, he was crushing a German peasant, whose face wore an expression of agony. You could almost hear his cries of suffering, and he was so thin you knew he was dying of starvation. The caption read: And turned into this in our country.
My classmates clapped. The mood was relaxed, happy, which is rare during lesson time.
I started daydreaming about the photos and sketches on the wall. I compared that old Jew arriving from the Orient with a young Jew arriving, if not from the Orient, then from the East. From Poland. Lukas. Yes, him, obviously. Could he be the old Jew’s grandson? When Lukas arrived at Kalish, he was already blond—the Napola didn’t change his hair colour—nor his blue eyes. But he was thin, dirty, dressed in rags, with lice in his mop of hair, and a wild stare. And now…If you did a drawing of him now, he’d be sporting the handsome Jungmann uniform, pink skin, and a clear, pure gaze. You could draw Walter’s face under his boot, the kid he beat up in the study hall with Gunter and Herman. Under the sketch you could have the same caption as in the paper: He arrived from Poznan like this…and turned into this in our country, at the Napola.
But, on the other hand, something wasn’t quite right. If you wrote Lukas’s statistics into the chart the teacher had given us at the beginning of the classes, his would be identical to the Aryan measurements. Moreover, Lukas had the green racial-fitness certificate.
I wanted to tell the teacher everything, that Lukas was Jewish and Aryan—so he could explain the contradiction to me, for once and for all.
But I said nothing.
And now I’m sick of biology lessons. I’m bored to death. There’s no more drawing, no more writing. All we do is learn by rote. The theme of the lessons has changed to ‘How to recognise a Jew?’ This was our written dictation:
The Jew’s nose is curved at the end. It looks like the number 6. If some non-Jews also have a curved nose, we must bear in mind that this curve is angled upwards. The Jew has thick lips and thick eyebrows. He is small in stature, with short, bandy legs and shrunken arms. He has a short, receding forehead, black curly hair like Negros, and jug ears. He has a foul odour, a beard infested with lice and grimy clothes.
I hate dictation. I can never get my participle agreements right. I get confused with double consonants. I don’t like learning by rote, and even less reciting in front of the clas
s.
What’s more, for homework, we have to find other descriptions to add to this text, which is also framed and hanging on the wall.
I can’t find any damn descriptive adjectives. Unlike my classmates.
I don’t take part in the oral.
My marks take a dive.
It’s a relief, a few weeks later, when the biology classes seem to change tack. The teacher starts to talk about animals. What does an animal lack, compared to a human? Easy, a brain! The faculty of thinking. I’m the first one to raise my hand and give the correct answer. Then the teacher outlines how very small animals behave, like ticks and fleas, which feed off blood and transmit diseases to humans. Using information about medical and scientific progress, he explains how it is necessary to fight such creatures in order to preserve human health.
I’m fascinated by the lesson and, for the first time ever, I get a surprise when the bell goes.
Before he dismisses us, the teacher gives out some homework for next lesson. Good news: that should lift my marks.
He writes on the blackboard, ‘Explain the necessity of exterminating the Jewish people.’
How does Lukas cope, when…
The shower.
I’ve already told you we have daily showers at the Napola, which is nice, as well as necessary given our fourteen hours of sport a week. Flawless, sparkling clean and tidy, they’re located next to the dormitories and fitted with separate basins, another element of comfort aimed at instilling a keen awareness of hygiene, something particularly indispensable to us Aryans.
The only hitch is the damned soap we’re supposed to wash ourselves with. It’s really bad quality, but, for several months now, there’s been no other soap to be found in all of Germany. It just doesn’t lather. Even if you hold it under the water and rub it hard between your hands, all it does is scrape your skin, without even the slightest bubble of lather appearing. And, on top of that, it stinks, a nauseating odour, a bit like a piece of rotten meat left to dry. If you add to that the water restrictions we’re forced to adhere to, the shower is really not enjoyable anymore. My classmates and I are forever whingeing about it, even if it’s become a standing joke.
‘Damned Jewish soap!’
‘It stinks like shit!’
‘Come on! Give me some, even if it’s useless!
Ever since I arrived at the Napola, I’ve heard the soap referred to as RIF. I have no idea what this means. Not wanting to look stupid, I haven’t dared ask. I’ve tried to guess. R as in…Reich? I as in…Immer? F as in False? Which makes: ‘Reich, always, false’. Meaningless. Or R as in…Reisen? I as in…Im? F as in Führer? ‘Journey in the Führer’, completely incoherent. I had another go: Richtig Ideal Farbe (‘exact ideal colour’), but what does that have to do with soap? The soap’s colour is, incidentally, as disgusting as the smell. I kept racking my brains doing endless combinations of letters—in vain.
I gave up and asked Manfred the wimp. As he’s hopeless at sport and spends all his time drawing, it was not in his interest to make fun of me. He replied politely, in his reedy voice, ‘RIF? They’re the initials of the industrial company Reichsstelle Industrielle…something or other, I forget the last word. But, at the Napola, they’ve turned it into Rein Juden Fett. And changed the I to a J.’ Rein Juden Fett, he repeated as, gobsmacked, stock-still under the water, which had gone from tepid to freezing, I turned into a statue.
‘That’s why the soap stinks and doesn’t lather,’ concluded Manfred. ‘But it’s better than no soap at all.’
Rein Juden Fett.
Rein Juden Fett.
Oh, right, of course, you’ll need the translation, won’t you, to understand why I remained motionless under the freezing water. Here it is: ‘Pure Jewish fat.’
Soap made out of the body fat of Jews. The Jews in the camps…Like, for instance, Lukas’s mother, in Treblinka.
I can’t wash myself anymore. I am dirty and I stink.
But Lukas takes a shower every single day! He’s clean, impeccable. He’s even starting to shave.
He’s becoming Aryan, and as for me…it’s as if I’m becoming Jewish.
I discovered how Lukas coped. Despite my superior intelligence, I couldn’t work it out by myself. He had to explain it to me. I could never have imagined anything like it.
Study hall. I’m racing to finish an essay I have to hand in tomorrow. The title is ‘Imagine the transformation of an animal by a magic potion.’ Just think how much children my age love that sort of homework. Ordinary children, perhaps. Not students from the Napola. The point is not to waffle on about inanities, describing the transformation of some sweet little puppy playing with a ball into a huge scary dragon breathing fire and terrifying a beautiful princess. This essay, like all our assignments, has to be written from a Nazi perspective.
I’ve got a few ideas…The animal could be Lukas, and the magic potion could be the Napola, which has made him a hardcore Aryan. Or, the animal could be me, and the magic potion, with poisonous properties this time, could be Lukas. Because, and I’m fully aware of it, he has really messed with my head from the day I met him. And it’s not getting any better. Contact with Lukas is transforming me. He is ‘de-Aryanising’ me, and ‘Jewifying’ me. (I’m making up new words for this situation.) Well! Whether the animal is Lukas or me, I’ll know how to structure my homework and I’ll be able to describe a very precise transformation. But how can I work on either of these two ideas without getting myself into deep shit?
Impossible.
I’m stuck. I don’t have any other options. Here I am, facing my blank page, chewing on the shaft of my pen, biting my nails, staring gloomily out the window. It’s dusk outside and it’s barely 5 p.m. I feel like chucking it in. I’m fed up.
Just to top off my annoyance, Manfred is sitting next to me, bent over his exercise book, scribbling away without stopping. At the rate he’s going, he’ll use up our ration of paper for the evening. The scratching of his pen echoes in the silence of the room. It’s giving me the creeps. What can this moron possibly be writing? Reading over his elbow, I can see that his chosen animal is Germany after World War I and his magic potion is the Führer. He’s gone for the simplest, the most obvious idea, and he’ll get the best mark. Idiot!
I’m abandoning the bloody essay for now and I’m going to do something else. Once a month, each of us has to send a letter of support to a soldier at the front. My correspondent is a certain Harald Schwarz, Rottenführer by profession. Okay, at least this is easy: I’ll just write the same things as for the last one, rephrased. He has to stand firm, even if the fighting is tough; his mother country cares for him, believes in him, is proud of him, and has no doubt about the final victory, which is approaching rapidly and to which he will have contributed through his sacrifices. He will be rewarded for his devotion to the Führer, he will return from the front covered in glory, and so on and so forth…So now, I’m off and running, my pen racing faster than Manfred’s. I write ten lines nonstop, and only stop for a second when I get a slight cramp in my hand. (I can run or swim for two hours in a row without getting a cramp, but it hurts to hold a pen for so long!) When I look up, I realise that it’s dark. The days are getting shorter and shorter; soon it will be the winter solstice. It’s as if the night will last forever, and that’s an awful feeling.
Why do I feel so melancholy all of a sudden? Is it yet another weird side effect of the ‘magic potion’ gnawing at me from inside? Despite the shadows, I decide to get back to work and, as I pull myself together, I recognise the silhouette crossing the courtyard. It’s heading towards the primary-school building. My building…What is he doing around here? After all this time, is he finally condescending to recognise that I exist?
I wait, motionless, on the alert. Soon I hear footsteps on the staircase, then on the other side of the study hall door, which opens soon enough.
‘Hi there, Skullface.’
The main thing is not to move, not to turn in his direction. Not to exhibit
any emotion—excitement, annoyance—none whatsoever. Especially not joy.
Anyway, I have no reason at all to rejoice. If Lukas has deigned to appear, it’s not out of friendship for me, but because he’s suffered a real blow lately. Has he come to be comforted by me? He can get lost. Perhaps I’ll get my own back…
The real blow was the death of Gunter last week. I’m not aware of the exact circumstances; all I know is that it happened during a paramilitary exercise. It could have been Herman. It could have been Lukas, since the three of them were inseparable. And Lukas was wounded; he’s swathed in a big bandage below the waist, which doesn’t in any way diminish his elegant demeanour—on the contrary, it looks like a bullfighter’s belt. His posture is even more upright and his bearing even prouder.
Anyway, Gunter’s gone; there are only two musketeers left. And he continues to make our lives hell: because of his death, the Christmas and winter solstice festivities have been cancelled. The school is in mourning. The ceremony we did end up attending was a funeral wake. The Heimführer, the head of teaching, the bursar, the service staff (admin, kitchen, laundry, medical) and students, of course—we were all gathered around Gunter’s coffin, which was draped in the Reich’s flag. We were all in full uniform, decorated with a black armband. The speeches and ceremonial rites went on forever. And it was cold in the snow. And we were tired. Gunter’s parents were the guests of honour and left with the body as soon as it was all over. I have no idea how significant it was that Obergruppenführer Lübeln was present, or how appropriate it is to sing the praises of the dead. But the fact is that Gunter the idiot, Gunter the thug, as thick as two planks, Gunter who had a pea (or make it a bean, because I’m so funny!) for a brain, has become Gunter the brave, Gunter of the elite intellectuals, Gunter the model Jungmann. He died in a remarkable demonstration of his courage and incomparable Draufgängertum. He magnificently embodied the major slogan of the Hitler Youth movements: We are here to serve the Führer and to die for him. I swear he wouldn’t have received more hon-ours if he had single-handedly destroyed twenty Russian tanks at Stalingrad.